There are a lot of familiar faces in the cast of “The White Lotus” Season 3. There’s Jason Isaacs, a “Harry Potter” veteran. There’s Carrie Coon, breakout star of “The Leftovers.”  There’s even Lalisa Manobal, better known as K-pop superstar Lisa. And then there’s Patrick Schwarzenegger, a man whose name you certainly recognize even if you’re not quite sure where you’ve seen him before.

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Schwarzenegger’s famous family isn’t the only reason why he’s carved a place for himself in pop culture. Ever since he was young, the actor has found ways to get himself in the public eye, experimenting with a series of ventures that have required quite the transformation. That willingness to try everything came from his father, as he explained to The Irish Times; after all, Arnold has been a bodybuilder and an actor, a politician, and a businessman. “Most of his advice comes back to working hard and making sure that when you wake up each and every day, that you want to do the thing that you’re working on,” he said.

Patrick, too, has jumped around the industry. At times he’s been a model and a clothing entrepreneur, an actor and even a chef. That’s not to mention his detour as a music video hunk. Read on for a look at the stunning transformation of Patrick Schwarzenegger.

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Patrick Schwarzenegger was born in 1993 to two famous parents. His father is Arnold Schwarzenegger of “The Terminator” fame, and his mother is Maria Shriver, a journalist and member of the Kennedy clan. There were signs that Arnold and Shriver’s marriage was never going to last, but even so, Patrick had a pretty idyllic upbringing.

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For example, because his father was a busy actor before becoming governor of California, Patrick grew up hanging out on his dad’s movie sets. “My favorite activity growing up was my dad yanking me out of school early and getting to go to set,” he told VMAN. “For a kid, it was like a dream. You got to go to Universal Studios, and during my dad’s breaks, we’d take the golf cart around, go to ‘King Kong,’ ‘Jaws,’ ride ‘Jurassic Park’ and ‘E.T.’ It just opened my eyes to the film world.”

Then, when Patrick was 10, his father became governor. In a 2018 interview with Front Row Features, Patrick explained that this represented quite a change in his life. “It’s definitely a great experience. I learned a lot,” he said. “Obviously, being a governor is amazing, but for me as a kid, going to the film sets was more fun for me.” Can’t argue with that; after all, the youngster would soon follow in his father’s footsteps into entertainment, not politics.

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Being the son of “The Governator” afforded Patrick Schwarzenegger access to the upper echelons of Hollywood. On the other hand, he was the son of Arnold Schwarzenegger, a man who apparently had some unconventional ideas about how to teach his children important lessons. 

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In a 2023 interview with People, Arnold recalled an incident when Patrick was a misbehaving tween. Apparently, Patrick had asked the family’s maids to make his bed, which enraged his father. “I opened up the door to the balcony, picked up the mattress and threw it down with the bedsheets, the pillows, everything,” the “Junior” star remembered. Patrick had to go downstairs and lug all his stuff back up to his bedroom. “I said, don’t ever make someone come in and clean your room, clean your shower or make your bed,” Arnold said.

They also argued over the younger Schwarzenegger’s love of long showers. “Five minutes, one shower, and then that’s it and we’re turning it off,” Patrick was told. His father even installed a German-style timer that shut off the hot water. “He got the shower on and he was whistling and singing in there and thinking Daddy’s not around,” Arnold recalled, “[and] all the sudden the ice-cold shower came on. And all of a sudden, we heard downstairs, the scream.”

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When Patrick Schwarzenegger was in middle school, he co-founded Project360, a clothing company that helped raise money for various charitable causes. In an interview with WWD, the budding entrepreneur said he got his business sense from his parents. “My dad helps me a lot with my business side, and my mom and my grandparents had a huge influence with the charitable component and the idea of giving back,” he said. “I’ve learned everything from them.” Through Project360, he raised money for Alzheimer’s research and donated to Best Buddies International, a Kennedy-founded organization for people with intellectual disabilities.

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It was hugely successful, too, especially for a project launched by a teenager. Speaking with Startup to Storefront, Schwarzenegger recalled that his first launch involved rubber bracelets, Livestrong-style. (Gen-Z, ask your millennial friends.) He purchased thick bracelets from China and had them embossed with words like “Love” and “Empower.” “Me, my brother, and two friends walked around selling these things, and I did like $20,000 of bracelets in a day,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, business is so fun.'”

Speaking with Details in 2011, he acknowledged that he was at a peculiar moment in his life. “My mom raised me with the idea of doing public service, and I definitely want to go in that direction. But I also want to follow in my dad’s entrepreneurial footsteps,” he said. Acting, too, would soon follow.

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Before he graduated from high school, Patrick Schwarzenegger signed with L.A. Models and began appearing in some major campaigns. When he was 17, he posed shirtless for Hudson Jeans on a Sunset Strip billboard. Speaking with WWD, he reasoned, “I looked at Hudson’s previous ad campaigns and I knew they were sexy and showed off skin and stuff. But they all come out really well so I knew I was in good hands.”

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Modeling wasn’t his real passion, though; a lot of his gigs were invested back into his Project360 clothing company. He also had an eye toward following in his father’s footsteps in Hollywood. “I’ve wanted to do some sort of acting stuff down the line, but modeling is a good way to get comfortable in front of the camera,” he told WWD. “L.A. Models is setting up a lot of cool stuff for me now.”

Still, even though it wasn’t his ultimate goal, he threw himself into modeling headfirst anyway. His mother took to calling him Positive Patrick thanks to his can-do attitude, as he explained to The Irish Times. “I try to see things in a positive light. That can be easier said than done,” he said. “I have a lot of things I want to accomplish. It’s not about making a lot of money. It’s about doing what I enjoy.”

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Though young Patrick Schwarzenegger’s career was beginning to take off, he nevertheless sparked a series of bad headlines related to partying. The first incident happened while he was still in high school, when he threw a massive Halloween shindig at his family’s Pacific Palisades home. “[I threw] the biggest party any high-school kid has ever been to,” he bragged to Details, noting that more than 600 people had shown up. He’d even flown out a rap group called The Pack to perform at the party, which got shut down by police. His parents didn’t really mind. “They’re glad I had fun with it, but they weren’t happy with how it was portrayed in the media.” After all, the young entrepreneur had charged each attendee $20. “I easily made [my investment] back,” he reasoned.

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After high school, Schwarzenegger matriculated at the University of Southern California to study business and cinematic arts. He soon ran into even more trouble, finding himself getting kicked out of a club while underage. Apparently he’d used a fake ID to sneak in, and he was caught after getting in a fight with a DJ. “I guess Patrick became annoyed so he started throwing ice at him,” a source told Us Weekly. When TMZ published video of him shouting expletives, he apologized on X, formerly Twitter. “Excuse my language. I apologize” he wrote. He added in another post, “Live and learn, hope everyone has a blessed day.”

In 2013, Patrick Schwarzenegger starred in a music video by a then-up-and-coming pop star by the name of Ariana Grande. The video, which was inspired by William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” — as well as Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 flick “Romeo + Juliet” — was for the song “Right There,” the third single off of Grande’s debut album, “Yours Truly.” In it, Schwarzenegger plays the “Romeo” to Grande’s “Juliet.” After the two lovers find one another on the dance floor at a masquerade ball, they come ever-so-close to making out in a pool. “The director was like, ‘Kiss! Kiss!’ and I was like, ‘No,'” Grande told Extra. “I’ve kissed in a music video before, and I didn’t want to just be the one to kiss a lot of boys in a lot of videos. I felt like it was a very sweet happy ending.”

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Schwarzenegger looked back on the experience more than a decade later, recalling on the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast that he’d been asked by Scooter Braun, Grande’s manager, to be in the video. “We shot it for two days, and it was kind of like, this cool moment. And then she really blew up, blew up after that … It was a cool experience.”

By 2014, Patrick Schwarzenegger had already done a lot of things in his first two decades on earth. He’d experimented with entrepreneurship, acting, modeling, and philanthropy by the time he added another item to his resumé: restaurateur. That year, he opened his first Blaze Pizza restaurant, a franchiseable pizza concept developed with his mother’s help.

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Though Maria Shriver invested in the parent company — fitting! — Schwarzenegger told People that he raised the money to open a location at The Grove in Los Angeles all on his own. “It’s been my responsibility to oversee everything,” he said. “I’m the owner, founder, pizza maker, pizza lover and anything else you want to throw on in there.”

The Grove location came first and has since closed, but in 2015, Schwarzenegger also opened a Blaze Pizza on the USC campus, which he was still attending at the time. He told TheArnoldFans that he had a suggestion for his fellow students who wanted a dish inspired by him. “I want to make a Patrick Pizza, like a Protein Patrick Pizza topped with a bunch of meats,” he said. “Just put some meats on there and stack it up.”

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Patrick Schwarzenegger’s star-studded relationship history has drummed up a lot of interest over the years. This, of course, reached a fever pitch when he dated Miley Cyrus in late 2014, little more than a year after her infamous performance at the MTV VMAs. That meant Cyrus was attracting a whole lot of attention at the time, and Schwarzenegger got swept up in her orbit.

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The short-lived relationship seems to have been a rocky one, especially when Schwarzenegger was forced to address photos of him with his arm around a girl in Mexico. He took to X to deny that the pictures, which had been published in the Daily Mail, represented him cheating on the “Wrecking Ball” singer. “Omg. It’s one of my best friends girlfriend,” he wrote (via E! News). “Would NEVER do anything against my GF. Girls have guy friends and guys have friends that are girls.” Ah, college.

They broke up just a month later, firmly going their separate ways in April 2015. A source told People that it wasn’t just a break, it was definitely a break-up. “They’re just in two different places in their lives,” the source said. “He’s in college and she’s focused on her music and career.” A tale as old as time.

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Patrick Schwarzenegger’s acting career began in earnest while he was still at USC. By 2018, two years after he graduated, he landed his first leading-man role in “Midnight Sun.” The Bella Thorne vehicle featured the former Disney star as a girl who’s allergic to sunlight; after she accidentally stays out with a boy (Schwarzenegger) until sunrise, she finds her health quickly deteriorating.

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In an interview with Front Row Features, Schwarzenegger said he enjoyed the experience of leading a movie because he got along so well with his co-star. “It’s either you mesh with the person or you don’t,” he said. “Me and Bella got along. We were in Vancouver for two months and there was no one else really that we hung out with, so it was just me and her. … We would go on bike rides and hikes and just do stuff together.”

Given that this was his first major foray into movies, Schwarzenegger also faced questions about whether he’d only been cast because of his famous last name. He acknowledged that it probably gave him a leg up, but he insisted that he’d earned his spot, too. “Does it open up some doors for me or help me meet people? Yeah,” he confessed. “But again, everything in life, if you’re not going to put the time in, if you’re not going to work, if you’re not dedicated, people can only care so much what your name is.”

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Early in his career, Patrick Schwarzenegger acted mostly in bit parts. “Midnight Sun” gave him more to do, but the movie wasn’t particularly a critical smash; it currently sits at a mere 21% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. A horror movie called “Daniel Isn’t Real” did much better with critics — it’s at 84% Fresh — but it wasn’t exactly a box office smash. Schwarzenegger’s career, in other words, needed a hit.

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He finally found success and critical respectability in 2022, when he starred in HBO’s fictionalized adaptation of true-crime series “The Staircase.” In a role that seems to have prefigured his breakout part in “The White Lotus,” Schwarzenegger was cast as Todd Peterson, the son of a wealthy man whose life falls apart. In this case, the patriarch stands accused of killing his wife, and the family must rally around him as he defends himself.

This role asked more from Schwarzenegger than anything had before, and he told People that co-star Colin Firth — who played his father — played a key role in his transformation as an actor. “To be surrounded by this kind of talent and these level of actors and actresses was something that was like a dream come true for me,” he said. “[I’ve] talked about how great [Firth] was off the screen towards me and just welcoming me in. He was so helpful and willing to work with me so I’ll forever be grateful.”

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Patrick Schwarzenegger met fiancée Abby Champion back in 2015. “We were all meeting for drinks in a big group and hit it off and the rest is history,” he told Fashion Week Daily. Champion was actually on a date with a friend of the actor’s, but he was gracious enough to realize what was happening. “We’re thankful for him because he introduced us,” Champion said. “[Patrick] swooped in!”

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The models later worked together, starring in a joint campaign for Calvin Klein. In 2019, Schwarzenegger told E! News that the partnership worked well, reflecting, “I think the best part about having her by my side is that she’s always rooting for me and wanting the best for me and bringing out the best in me! I always say that in a relationship, you have to be each other’s biggest cheerleader. Build each other up. And she does that for me.”

The relationship has lasted ever since. “The White Lotus” actor proposed to his real-life partner in December 2023, announcing the news on Instagram. “FOREVER AND EVER,” he captioned a photo of Champion showing off a sizable engagement ring. As of this writing, they still haven’t set a date. As he told E! News in late 2024, “We’re behind.”

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The third season of “The White Lotus” premiered in 2025, and Patrick Schwarzenegger stars as Saxon Ratliff, eldest son of a finance guy who evidently made some bad business moves. There’s a shooting lurking in the future, a scene-stealing performance by Parker Posey, and a whole lot of uncomfortable tension between Saxon and his siblings. Schwarzenegger, naturally, experienced quite the breakout moment from the racy role, which saw him go fully nude on television … which was his idea. “I was like, dude, this guy would just walk around naked. This is not the kind of guy who’s wearing pajamas to bed,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “He sleeps naked and his brother being there is not going to change anything.”

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He seems to have enjoyed his experience filming the show. In an emotional Instagram post when filming wrapped, he shared a series of pictures alongside a lengthy caption. They shot in Thailand, and Schwarzenegger seems to have fallen in love with the country. “To Thailand — thank you for some of the most delicious foods. The beautiful beaches & water!” he wrote. “The massages!”

He also shouted out Mike White, the man who created, wrote, and directed the entirety of the show. “You are a genius. Thank you for bringing me along this journey,” Schwarzenegger added. “I feel so lucky to of been apart of It! Thanks for making a kids dream come true.”